Page 39 of Kill Your Darlings

“I thought he’d be back already. Why don’t you go to bed?”

“Okay,” he said, then looked at the whiskey in his hand. He seemed confused.

“Thanks for the drink,” Wendy said, taking the glass from him and having a long sip at it, trying not to shudder. “Let’s take you up to bed.”

He was asleep by the time she heard the car in the gravel driveway that meant that Connie Alvarez was dropping Jason off. She went downstairs to meet him. He had lots to say about thePlanet of the Apesfilm he’d seen, but she could tell he was tired and managed to get him into his bedroom with the door closed by eleven. Then she brushed her teeth and went into the master bedroom. Thom was snoring in the way he did when he’d had too much to drink, silences punctuated by explosive guttural sounds. She got onto her side of the bed, slid under the single sheet, and cracked openThe Year of Magical Thinkingby Joan Didion. She had only a few pages left togo, but she couldn’t concentrate. Instead, she watched Thom in the oblivion of his sleep. How would she feel if he never woke up, if his heart suddenly stopped in the middle of the night? She’d be upset, of course, but also partly something else. Relieved? Lightened? He was unwell right now, and there was no reason to suspect that he was going to get better. It was true what she’d told him about her husband, how she had no regrets. But sometimes she regretted that she hadn’t found a way to do it herself.

She turned off her reading lamp and curled into the position she liked to sleep in. Who’s “they”? she thought to herself, remembering Thom’s words. Then dismissed it. Tomorrow Thom would be sober. Maybe they could do something as a family. It was a Saturday, after all, and the weather was supposed to be nice.

2009

i

“I’m going to call,” Thom said.

“He’s probably just walking around in circles somewhere daydreaming.”

“Still.” He had the landline phone in his hand. “Do you know the number?”

Wendy checked her cellphone for Connie’s number and read it aloud to Thom. She wished he’d give it a few more minutes. Somehow, as soon as the call was made everything was going to change. Jason would be officially missing.

“Oh, hey, Connie,” Thom said. “Jason’s not still there, is he?”

Wendy could hear the timbre of Connie’s nasal voice but not the words.

“No, not yet,” Thom said. “He’s probably just lollygagging. Do you know exactly when he left?”

After ending the phone call Thom looked up at Wendy. His face had lost all its color. “I’ll go look for him.”

“Okay,” Wendy said. Seeing Thom’s face made it even more realsomehow than the phone call to Connie, although she was telling herself there was nothing to worry about. Jason had been walking back and forth to his best friend Julia’s house for the whole of the summer. It wasn’t far, just under a mile, but there was one semi-busy street to cross, and she also knew that Jason sometimes cut across the conservation land up near the ledge, even though Thom had told him not to do it.

“You stay here,” Thom said.

“Where are you going to look?”

“I’ll just backtrack over to Mount Salem Street.”

“You’ll check the woods?”

“I told him I didn’t want him to go through there.”

Wendy shrugged at him.

“Right, I’ll check,” Thom said.

“I wish you had a cellphone,” Wendy said. It had been a constant fight for the past few years, Thom determined to become the last person in the world to get a cellphone.

“I know, I know. I’ll get one, okay? But I don’t have one right now.”

“Take mine, and if you find him, then call me here, okay?”

Thirty minutes later Thom hadn’t returned and he hadn’t called, and Wendy dialed her cell number from the kitchen phone.

“I haven’t found him,” Thom said.

“You’ve been in the woods?”

“Yes, but I’m at Connie’s now. Julia said that he left exactly at five p.m.”

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